At present bulky cargo or unitized cargo is in most cases transferred, loaded or unloaded by a known fork-lift truck or hand lift. The overall width or length of the fork is structurally limited and even the largest fork measures three meters at most in length. Therefore, when the conventional fork is employed for the loading or unloading of containers or trucks, the fork operation has to be repeated many times. This creates large time losses and the turnover of containers or trucks is decreased. This makes it necessary to make an excessive number of containers or trucks ready for use.
The most popular mode of mechanical cargo handling is the combination of a forklift or hand lift with a pallet. This mode of mechanical cargo handling, however, involves the following trouble in addition to those inherent in the fork of the known forklift or handlift. Namely, in this mode of handling, a pallet has to accompany cargo to the destination of shipment and accordingly, until the destination is reached and the handling there is finished, the pallet is not free for diversion to other uses. An empty pallet after delivery of cargo at destination has to be stowed away or held until returned to the origin of shipment and for this purpose much space, time and money have to be wasted. Individual enterprises are striving for joint use of pallets through unification or pooling of a wide variety of pallets in use, but as yet this aim has not been attained. Thus, under the present circumstances, pallets have to be made available in the same excessive quantities as here-to-fore.